Designing a room requires many different design choices, including the arrangement and orientation of furniture, appliances, and/or other fixtures in the room, the color of the walls, the type of flooring to be used within the room, the placement of artwork or other decorative elements in the room, the arrangement of lighting fixtures in the room, and importantly, the storage and configuration of products for performing activities in the room. These design choices are often based on various constraints such as room size, room layout, consumer preference, size of the furniture, appliances, and/or fixtures to be placed within the room, intended use of the room, price considerations and aesthetic considerations.
While everyone has a general idea of exactly how furniture should be placed within a room, there is also an assumption of where heavily used products should be placed based on aesthetic considerations. Unfortunately, by trial and error, it is usually discovered that those ideal locations, while aesthetically pleasing, are not the most efficient locations and can cause some serious problems. This can add stress as well as safety concerns depending on the situation.
For instance, parents expecting to bring a new born home may arrange a nursery room so that a diaper changing table, dresser, crib, chair, and diaper pail are arranged in a manner that is most aesthetically pleasing in the nursery room. Products used for changing a baby such as diapers, wipes, ointments, lotions, baby powder, paper towels, clothes, etc. may be stored in various locations throughout the nursery. For example, the diapers or baby's clothes may be stored out of sight in a drawer of a dresser located within the nursery.
After the parents bring the newborn home, the parents may realize that the original configuration of the nursery room is not feasible. For instance, while changing a baby, a parent or other consumer may realize that the diapers, wipes, or other products are located too far away from the changing table. This leads to inefficiency and safety concerns as the parent or supervisor will have to leave the baby alone on the changing table while retrieving the products from other areas of the nursery.
In addition, the drawer for storing diapers may only be able to store eight diapers at a time. Because most newborn babies use an average of ten diapers a day, the drawer is not the most ideal location for storing the diapers because it will require extra refill time to keep the diaper stocked. The contemplated arrangement of the nursery room simply is not feasible because it does not allow for the safe or efficient changing of a baby in the nursery room. The room will have to be physically rearranged in order to perform the baby changing activity safely and efficiently, leading to frustration.
The same sort of problems may arise with the arrangement of a bathroom space. Parents expecting to bring a newborn home may arrange products used for bathing a baby in various locations in a bathroom. For instance, the baby's shampoo, soap, and lotion may be located on a shelf next to the bath tub, the baby's toys may be arranged around the bath tub, and diapers for putting on the baby after the bath is finished may be arranged out of sight in a drawer in the bathroom. When the parent actually performs the activity of bathing the child, the parent may realize that the products used for bathing the baby are located beyond the reach of the parent. The parent will have to leave the baby alone in the bathtub to retrieve the product, raising serious safety concerns about leaving a newborn alone in a bath tub full of water. The products will have to be physically rearranged in the room to perform the activity of bathing the newborn safely. Parents may have to go through a period of trial and error until a safe and efficient arrangement of products is achieved.
Therefore, there is a need to develop an easy room planning system and method to simulate the environment, product placements, and use of a room prior to the real life conditions so that a consumer can analyze the feasibility of the room layout prior to physically arranging the room.